Jews from Ukraine: Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg is one of the most famous directors in human history! Category 🔯 — Jews from Ukraine #jewsukraine

📍 Born: 12/18/1946, Cincinnati 🇺🇸

💙💛 Spielberg's grandparents were Jews from Kamenets-Podolsky and Sudilkov, Khmelnitsky region. Ukraine

🔯 His mother ran a kosher halawi (dairy) restaurant. All of his immediate family were religious Jews. Stephen attended Hebrew school and also celebrated his bar mitzvah. His family was involved in the synagogue and had many Jewish friends.

🤔Spielberg had a hard time accepting his heritage

“I hate to admit it… but as a child, God forgive me, I was ashamed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was ashamed of the external perception.”

At school, anti-Semites broke his nose twice. “It was terrible.”

💍Spielberg met actress Kate Capshaw when he filmed her in the film Indiana Jones. They married in 1991, and the bride converted to Judaism at the time of their marriage.

Stephen said:

“Kate is a Protestant and she insisted on converting to Judaism. She spent a year studying, doing the mikveh, all of this. She decided to convert completely before our marriage. This, more than anything else, brought me back to Judaism. This shiksa (non-Jewish in Yiddish) made me a better Jew than my parents.”

🕯About the Holocaust, he said that his parents “talked about it all the time, and so it was always in my mind.”. His father lost at least 16 relatives in the Holocaust. In 1993, Spielberg directed Schindler's List about a businessman who helped save 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust. The film was included in all major ratings of the best films in history.

🇮🇱 Spielberg's Munich (2005) tells the story of the Israeli government's retaliation against Arab terrorists after 11 Israeli Olympians were kidnapped and killed during the 1972 Olympics.

📝 The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive is dedicated to the preservation and research of Jewish documentaries. The archive is run by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the World Zionist Organization. The archive contains more than 16,000 pieces of content.

🕎 Together with Victor Pinchuk (Ukraine), he produced the documentary film “Say Your Name”. The film tells about the survivors of Babi Yar, and was filmed based on the testimony of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation. The fund contains 55,000 video testimonies in 43 languages ​​from 65 countries, making it the largest archive of its kind in the world.

🇺🇦In 2006, Spielberg visited Ukraine for the first time in his life at the premiere of this film. The film had a significant impact on Ukrainian-Jewish relations and changed the understanding of the Holocaust in Ukraine.

👾In Spielberg's film “War of the Worlds” the events of the alien attack begin with anomalies in Ukraine.

🤝 In addition to cultural influence, Spielberg has repeatedly supported Israel and Ukraine:
❤️Donated $1 million to help Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War
❤️His sister Nancy is the founder and director of the Children of Chernobyl charity organization. Stephen also supports this company.
❤️In 2022, in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he and his wife donated $1 million to Ukrainian refugees.
❤️ In 2023, following the Hamas attack on Israel, the Shoah Foundation, founded by Spielberg, collected more than 100 video testimonies from survivors of the October 7 attacks to add to the Holocaust Survivors collection. He said: “I never thought I would see such unspeakable barbarity against the Jews in my lifetime.”

🏆 Spielberg is one of the most awarded cinema figures and officially the most commercially successful director in history. He alone has received a Best Director nomination for six consecutive decades:

• Oscar: 3 awards / 23 nominations
• Emmy: 12 / 27
• Golden Globe: 9/24
• BAFTA: 2 / 14
• And hundreds more.
• He also received a special medal from the President of Israel 🥇

🎬 Featured films:

• Jaws;
• Alien;
• Indiana Jones film series;
• Jurassic Park;
• Schindler's List;
• Saving Private Ryan;
• Catch me if you can;
• Terminal;
• Munich.
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This article was prepared specifically for the site NAnews — Israel News, where you will find even more interesting stories about prominent Jews from Ukraine, such as Steven Spielberg.

Veda section @davidkrutonog — Jew from Ukraine and founder of a marketing agency tlv.agency

#jewsukraine

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